Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Monadology

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As there are an infinity of possible worlds, there are also an infinity of laws, certain ones appropriate to one; others, to another, and each possible individual of any world involves in its concept the laws of its world.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
It is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us Reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and of God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or Mind.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Thus it may be said that not only the soul, the mirror of an indestructible universe, is indestructible, but also the animal itself, though its mechanism may often perish in part and take off or put on an organic slough.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
These principles have given me a way of explaining naturally the union or rather the mutual agreement [conformité] of the soul and the organic body. The soul follows its own laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they agree with each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony between all substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
And as every present state of a simple substance is naturally a consequence of its preceding state, so its present is pregnant with its future.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; the truths of fact are contingent and their opposites are possible.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
The machines of nature, namely, living bodies, are still machines in their smallest parts ad infinitum.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz